Mod Note (Andy) - as the year comes to an end we're reposting the top Q&A's from 2015, this one was originally posted 7/19/2015.
Spent the past 5 years working for a B4 firm in the Assurance practice and am taking a FP&A Director role within industry in the coming weeks. Happy to answer any questions.
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These are great questions.
On paper, it may appear maniacal to hire a soon-to-be audit manager directly into an FP&A role, particularly at a similar or even higher level. During the interview process, my recruiter remained very transparent about my "competition". No names, companies, or any of that. Just their backgrounds and respective years of experience. Some of the candidates were already in FP&A roles and many carried over 10 years of experience. Quite honestly I thought it was a snowball's chance in hell.
So, I did my research. 10 hours of googling things like "best traits in FP&A managers", and "characteristics of top finance professionals". While I clearly wasn't going to learn how to memorize the mechanics for valuing a company's new product using a DCF model to then be spouted out during an interview, I could at least start realistically by identifying the required intangibles for the role, and then draw on my experiences in Big 4 to align myself to them. I then supplemented that with my greatest accomplishments while working at my firm as icing on the cake (i.e. highly rated, international rotations, etc.)
And it worked, like charm. If I could analogize it to baseball, the Company for which I was interviewing was essentially the team which could have easily drafted a few college players and known exactly what they were going to get. Or, they could opt to roll the dice on a high school player with a burning fire and a high ceiling, bring him in, groom him up, pay a little less, and mold the exact product they want. Lucky for me, they chose the latter.
As it relates to the nature of the jobs, audit and FP&A are very different. In a nutshell, auditing has effectively become a giant replication of your client's work to ensure their policy aligns with GAAP and recent PCAOB push-down, supplemented with an abundance of checklists, frequent difficult discussions (internally and externally), and a feeling of "always being behind". If you think I am being bitter, that is probably fair. What drew me to FP&A was the "forward-looking" component, in that I will be involved with preparing budgets, forecasts, creating models, working with M&A projects, etc.
As for your last question, refer to my response to Walkio.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for making this thread. I'm currently working for a Big 4 firm and am hoping to transition to FP&A down the line with CFO as the absolute end goal like yourself. I have a few quick questions I was hoping you can help me out with:
How hard was the move for you and do you think having an audit background hurt you at all? I've heard very mixed things about this on WSO, but some people say that having audit experience pigeon-holes you as just an accountant and for financial reporting/internal audit roles, which isn't exactly my goal. Can you speak to whether or not you think it's true and or how to sell your assurance experience for more finance-oriented/forward-looking roles?
If you had to do it again, would you still stay till around manager before making the jump? My current plan is to do 3 years in public, mostly so I can say I have 1 year of being a senior on jobs, and then start looking for financial analyst/FP&A type of roles, Would this be a decent plan or would you advise more or less time?
How valuable was the CPA credential (if at all) for finance jobs in corporate?
Thanks in advance!
Happy to hear that you are on a similar track. Regardless of whatever path you take, keep your eyes on the prize and don't become discouraged along the way. As for your questions:
As it relates to transferable tangible skills, there aren't many. Fortunately, I worked on a few clients which engaged in projects which were outside of the normal course of the audit (i.e. reviewing DCF impairment models, testing the values of working capital acquired during an acquisition, etc.). Did these impress the interviewers? Maybe not. But it gave me a platform on which to stand and profess an interest in the finance realm. They will not care about the monotonous months you spent performing walkthroughs or TOCs, the 5-page memo you drafted to summarize your substantive rollforward strategy, nor the number of samples needed for A/R confirmations in order to achieve a 95% confidence level based on the audit risk tables. What really counts are the intangible skills, such as managing team, providing feedback, dealing with issues/pressures, meeting deadlines, managing budgets, communications, etc.
My advice: Find clients which have wacky transactions which requires the involvement of your transaction advisory services group, and put your name in the ring. While the advisory guys will certainly do the bulk of the work, there is still an onus on the audit team to review the underlying inputs, which will give you some exposure and allow you to familiarize yourself with the process so you can then articulate what you learned to a prospective employer.
I will also caveat that while I was not yet a manager on paper, I have actually served as a manager in the field for the past year, so I sold that fact very heavily.
No problem, romborama. I shed some light on this specific topic in my response to TommyGunn, so maybe take a look. As it relates to getting FP&A experience on the audit side, I would stress for you to seek out clients which execute unusual transactions throughout the year (i.e. acquisitions, divestitures, impairment review, etc.) You can do this by talking with your partner group (i.e. requesting more challenging work) or even with peers or colleagues who are a level or two higher than you. From an audit perspective, this type of work will likely involve the review of forecasts and models, which will allow you to get a glimpse of the FP&A world. To the extent you get your hands on these items, dive in head first.
Great post!
Congrats on your gig CPA85, and to everyone else also trying to move out of the Big 4 industry - Just stay diligent and focus for the right role to come up. Timing is everything as illustrated in this post.
For those that need advice also on the financial services industry side = I myself came from the Big 4, rotated in Assurance and M&A Services (3 years there) then moved to a Bulge Brack I-Bank in its Private Equity group to do fund services and treasury operations. I'm more than happy to help also to answer questions, hence all of us at some point in our careers (especially in our 20's) seek the right fit for the short term and long term to fulfill personal and career aspirations. (And to party harder and live life happier)
After 3 years in the Big 4 (NYC based), moved onto this I-Bank's PE Group back/mid office role (IR/Operations/Financial Accounting/Treasury Ops/Fund Admin, etc.) for 4 years, sucked it up (sometimes longevity pays off) and transferred internally with a promotion (which was a key) in a Corporate FP&A role that is geared towards corporate investing and capital management. It also provided me with a rotational option since the firm supports mobility (yes I know a lot of people aren't a fan of this), but personally, I think having a good amount of years under your belt pays off in one company especially being groomed there with a title. I am a 2008 undergrad, so 7 years out of college and I also almost went to a Full Time MBA but I played my cards right (I do not want to banking long term, so it was pointless for me to be out of an MBA program at late 20's/early 30's). I took grad classes to leverage my background and studied abroad also, but will just do this at a tier 1 part time now that I got my career figured out. Oh, I do not have my CPA. Just be persistent, I've seen a lot of people just leave after 2-3 years, then get something worse that a job he/she can only see themselves doing for a couple years, then leave again (which leaves a lot of holes in the resume jumping around).